Rare earth elements can be fundamental to emerging green energy technologies in the United States (e.g., permanent magnet motors for wind turbines and disk drives, hybrid car batteries, compact fluorescent lighting, and/or displays in all types of consumer/defense electronics), as well as other usages such as industrial catalysts for refining heavier crude oil, automobile catalytic converters, and/or as alloying elements. Presently, rare earth elements can be obtained through mining.
Coals from certain regions of the world can be particularly rich in rare earth elements, approaching a total concentration of about 1000 parts-per-million (“ppm”). The combustion of coal in power plants for energy generation concentrates non-volatile minerals in the ash by about ten times, to about 10,000 ppm, or on the order of approximately 1%. Coal ash can be the product of burning coal. Coal ash can be comprised of fly ash and bottom ash. Fly ash can be ash that rises with flue gases. Bottom ash can be ash that is found at the bottom of a furnace. Fly ash can be collected before the flue gases reach chimneys of power plants.
A method to extract rare earth elements from coal is desired. The United States alone produces on the order of 100 million metric tons of fly ash annually. Accounting for process yield and variability in rare earth element content, if rare earth elements are extracted from coal ash, a reasonable fraction of currently available fly ash (e.g., about 10-15%) can be adequate to meet rare earth elements demand in the United States.